A Voice for Men writer laments: “Since the advent of ‘marital rape,’ sex is no longer a loving duty, so it has become whim and weapon.”

In the midst of a long and otherwise fairly tedious piece complaining about wives asking their husbands to do their fair share of the chores, Clint Carpentier offers some rather startling thoughts on marital rape laws, and how he thinks they help to make marriage a losing proposition for modern men.

In the good old days, he writes, “sex was a wifely duty she was obligated to provide as per the terms of marriage.” But “since the advent of ‘marital rape,’ sex [in marriage] is no longer a loving duty, so it has become whim and weapon … .”

Yep. Apparently “being raped by your husband” is really just a way to fulfill your “loving duty” as a wife.

So, Carpentier concludes, if wives demand that you do the chores around the house, and you can’t rape them at will, what’s the point of even having one in the first place? After all, he argues, in an age of washing machines and readymade meals chores are easy, and men can get “once per day of blasé sex” from “any street-hooker” or splurge on “mind-blowing sex once a week [from] a well trained call-girl.”

And so, he writes,

If women are demanding that their husbands do their “fair share” of the chores, then why do men need wives at all? In man’s attempt to make their wives lives easier, they have reduced the wifely duties to next to non-existent. Why, women? Why oh why would you drive those final coffin nails of obsolescence in? Aside from children, there’s no benefit left to having a wife.

Well, if the only “benefits” you can see in having a wife are someone who will do the cooking and cleaning and whom you can rape at will, then, no, there is no benefit to you in having a wife now that marital rape is illegal. And there is certianly no benefit to any woman in marrying or dating or possibly even being in the same room as you.

Where have all the good men gone? Well… where have all the good women gone?

That’s right: A man who considers marital rape to be a husband’s right honestly thinks that he’s one of the good ones.

AVFM’s Paul Elam loves to rail against the evils of traditionalism and chivalry. Interesting that marital rape is one element of traditionalism he apparently has no problem with.

@katz, See November’s open thread. (Short version: My mother had a stroke. 2013 continues to be terrible. I am at the stage where I want to swaddle every person I care about in bubble wrap to try to protect them.)

Get an overdue tax bill with a threat? Shit, the IRS is raping me bro!

Yeah, no. People who aren’t feminists constantly claim that things that aren’t rape are rape. While also claiming that things that are rape aren’t rape.

Coercion would be more like this:
Get an overdue tax bill with a threat of huge fines? IRS agent says, “I can make this go away if you sleep with me.”

I fear that a bunch of MRAs will read this and think, “I wonder how I can become an IRS agent.”

“You can’t have what you want if you don’t do what I want” and “I’m going to hurt you if you don’t do what I want” can perfectly well be the same thing. You could phrase any kind of terrible thing in terms of “you can’t have what you want” (eg, “you can’t have any food”).

Social justice warriors are notorious for failing to differentiate between “you can’t have what you want if you don’t do what I want” and “I’m going to hurt you if you don’t do what I want.” The first one is sometimes shitty, and when it is, SJWs use the word “coercion” to describe that. That’s because SJWs do not understand that a choice doesn’t become not a choice just because one’s options aren’t precisely as one would like them to be.

And MRAsshats are notorious for failing to realize that no means NO. Offering someone a devil’s choice instead of respecting their real choice is still rape.

AllyS: Hmm. Reminds me of a discussion I had with a libertarian. He defined coercion only as active threats, so taking advantage of another person’s misfortune is not coercive, as long as you’re not directly responsible for it. “Accept my horiffic job offer or starve” isn’t coercive, because the person making the offer isn’t directly starving you.

It was sickening to hear it applied to economics. It’s nauseating to hear it applied to rape apologetics.

I particularly like your point about coercion.
Social Justice Warriors are notorious for calling coercion rape.
Get an overdue tax bill with a threat? Shit, the IRS is raping me bro!

This is particularly ironic, given the apparent high volume of Libertarians in the MRM who do tend to claim that taxes are tantamount to rape. Or that claim that child support is tantamount to rape. They talk about “getting raped” by the courts so much, to be honest, that’s what I thought what this thread was about when I saw the title. It took me a minute to realize they were actually talking about marital rape, but as usual showing themselves to be total fucking assholes about everything.

AllyS: Hmm. Reminds me of a discussion I had with a libertarian. He defined coercion only as active threats, so taking advantage of another person’s misfortune is not coercive, as long as you’re not directly responsible for it. “Accept my horiffic job offer or starve” isn’t coercive, because the person making the offer isn’t directly starving you.

It was sickening to hear it applied to economics. It’s nauseating to hear it applied to rape apologetics.

Yes, this is a very common argument among both libertarians (as in folks like Robert Nozick) and anarcho-capitalists (see: Murray Rothbard) in their defense of wage labor. They’re the same folks who argue for “voluntary slavery” as an extension of their defense of wage labor (and, broadly speaking, their defense of capitalism).

What they have in common, among other things, is their lack of regard for the fact that the exhortation “Work or starve” is inherently coercive because of its manipulative effect. I don’t know many people who voluntarily choose to starve themselves as an alternative to work. I’ve also seen folks from the Austrian School of Economics, such as Ludwig von Mises, actually argue that the pitifully low wages for workers in 3rd-world sweatshops are totally okay because, according to his reasoning, low wages are better than no wages at all. So it’s like they readily admit that the system they advocate is extremely oppressive.

I think when MRAs and their ilk use similar reasoning to erase certain rape victims, their thirst for power is completely exposed. Using the reasoning of power-hungry economists and political theorists to criticize feminists who call all coerced sexual penetration rape? It’s hard to see that as anything but an attempt to retain privilege.

Basically, they argue that you can’t own something unless you can also sell it, and since people own themselves, they can also sell themselves. Right-wing libertarians and anarcho-capitalists aren’t known for having reasonable arguments.

To be fair, you’re right that many free market fundamentalists, anarcho-capitalists, etc. claim to be opposed to the idea of voluntary slavery. But their economic philosophy seems to inevitably support voluntary slavery anyway, so I’m always tempted to make generalizations about those people. Kind of like how I think about MRAs and their ilk.

*Hi-5* Same here! =D Anarcho-communist. It rubs me the wrong way for the same reason. I just don’t understand how you can enforce property rights without anything even resembling the state. And those “defense associations” they talk about…*shudder*

*Anarcho-high 5* =D
It is a little hard to define my “anarchist side”, but I would guess it is quite close to anarcho-communism. I always say “anarcho-feminist” because this side will most likely remain so for me =D

I believe they make no sense whatsoever. Every anarchist event, debate, reading, etc., everybody would be like “what is up with anarcho-capitalists”. Nobody could answer, but it always felt like it was just…. incomprehensible in a way. I am with you on that, the property rights thing and the defense associations are especially weird to me.

Ech. All this shit is just really gross, and weirdly tied in with ableism in my head. (Did you know it’s totally legal in the USA to pay your disabled employees less a couple bucks an hour? Goodwill does it.) Just… UGH. DO NOT WANT.

Reverse, actually. These are folks legally disabled, and the company believes it’s being kind by giving them ANY productive work to do. *angry eyeroll*

If I want to work for free, I’ll fucking volunteer, okay? Otherwise, I damn well expect to be paid at minimum wage at LEAST. That’s why it’s called fucking minimum wage.

For a society that complains so much about how disabled people are leeches and need to learn to be independent, they sure ain’t much on actually giving us the methods to do so! Jesus. Aaaaand this is why I hope and pray one day me and Sneak can work our way up to being a pro writer/comic-maker/artist/pet-sitter person.

Worst part? They don’t do it to mentally handicapped people like us (do we even count as such?) but people of lower IQ who may well not even realize that they’re being fucking used. They’re intentionally capitalizing on the disability itself.

But good luck on the pro writer/comic-maker/etc, my love of IS says you can do it, but I’m totally biased (then again, I guess your fans make your career huh?)

Actually, while the article I read on did have folks with lower IQ, but the people who were really het up and pissy about it were blind and possibly also with mobility impairments. They were fully cognizant that they were being used, they just couldn’t find anything better. And boy, were they MAD.

Enh, I suppose we’ll learn. I crunched the numbers earlier this week, and we’ve made over $1200 this year in art alone, with me just flailing around in mentally ill panic and desperation. That seems to be a pretty good start, considering how unwell I was the past year. So I think we have a decent chance! It won’t be easy or fast, but since when was my life easy? (My husband, on the other hand…)

Oh, by the way, I uploaded two new IS stories today! One is Giant Robots, but the other is IS prime and Thomas-centric. Also there is a fight over Star Wars vs. Indiana Jones.

I’m almost glad they’re using people who are aware they’re being used and raising a fuss, hopefully that fuss will make them stop using people. And this is why this country sucks, that they’re using people at all shouldn’t make me remotely happy, ever.

W00t for more IS! Can you email me that link though? I’m all depressive funk and thus useless.

The way to get consensual sex is to make the other person horny, is it not?

These reactionaries, they always CLAIM they want to play hardball, but as soon as someone is ready to play hardball with them that’s when they start crying and whining. See, reactionaries prefer to play hardball only if they can count on the opponent playing nice.

Thralldom is wonderful. Slavery is wonderful. Yeah right, it’s easy to say that when you assume it wouldn’t be you taking it – but it would.

Yes, Goodwill is horrible. Not only have I heard about that, but I’ve also heard stories about worker abuse from managers. I’ve heard of a young Goodwill employee with Down’s syndrome being forced to do excessive work by his employer.

“Anarcho-capitalist” sounds like “vegetarian carnivore” to me. It just doesn’t make sense. These ideologies are fundamentally opposed to each other, so anyone trying to mash them together needs to learn to English before they attempt political philosophy.

“Anarcho-capitalism” makes perfect sense if you subscribe to the Liberturdian ideology, according to which only the use of physical force qualifies as coercion. Therefore, no matter how oppressive they are, rackets, cartels and functional monopolies can never be authoritarian.